Rose Breasted Grosbeak

I can't even begin to explain the pure joy I had when I saw this guy, but let me start from the beginning.

I had just finished watching the return of the first Hairy woodpecker. After the day that I had, had I felt it couldn't get any better than that. The poor woodpecker was out of suet do to the inundation of blackbirds and house sparrows I hadn't even been bothering to fill them. I watched Hairy go from feeder to feeder in search of something tasty...he eventually settled for the peanut feeder.

So I decided once he seemed to be done to go out and fill the various feeders...after all this had to mean that there was going to be a steady stream of visitors now. Well I got up and got the suet and headed to the door. I went "oh he's in the maple" and then almost had a heart attack. I realized that I had a rose breasted grosbeak in MY YARD!!! I had no idea how long he'd been sitting there...the tree is out of range from where I was sitting.

I quickly grabbed the camera and started snapping away, shaking so bad that the majority of the pictures were blurry. I didn't care. I had a grosbeak in my yard.

To understand why this was so life shattering you have to understand that this was a lifetime goal of mine. Attract some sort of grosbeak to my yard...it's in my blog in fall somewhere. I'd already had the best birding day of the year and to top it off I had achieved one of my LIFETIME goals...I was over the moon and in tears I was so happy!

I just listened to him sing...it was beautiful. A female red winged blackbird came over to try and chase him away and he stood his ground!! It was wonderful.

I do think though that I might need to add another feeder...or at least put one higher up...maybe on a pole or pully system...something that would allow birds who prefer to feed higher up come to my yard...

I can hardly wait to see what tomorrow brings!